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Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

bbc.co.uk

11–20 of 109 posts

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#11
post #7

At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes. How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?

Apparently it is still more than 100 years before block rewards stop, unless the protocol is being changed. Wondering if quantum computing will break it beforehand

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#13
post #7

At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes. How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?

If you mean the hashing will stop - it won’t, because that’s how the system is secured. The creation of new bitcoins is irrelevant as far as energy use goes.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#14

The people that write these articles haven't the faintest idea of the protocol and repeat the same tired arguments over and over again. Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not? Who becomes the arbiter of what tech or sector deserves to draw on the grid?

>>"Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not?"

These questions always strike me as disingenuous / intentionally obtuse. But charitably assuming an honest question for purpose of frank discourse, my simplest answer / understanding is that in general, in the daily transactional system, participants work to reduce energy cost per transaction and over most periods of time this energy cost per transaction has been reducing, or if it increases, it is to support some additional identifiable functionality. This strikes me as a rational system.

With bitcoin, my understanding is that effective energy usage per transaction / for the system as a whole has been increasing. This strikes me as iterational.

I am eager to be corrected if my high level perception of bitcoin is incorrect and energy costs have been rationally decreasing / becoming more efficient over time.

If NOT.. Then how does anybody persuade themselves to believe this is a rational currency system, or at the very least, that it's energy usage in particular is in any way whatsoever defensible??

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#15
post #7

At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes. How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?

Some day the miner subsidy will stop, if mining stops the network stops

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#16
post #7

At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes. How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?

Mining can't stop. It's required to keep the ledger true. The block rewards will stop, but miners will still earn the transaction fees.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#17
post #12

"Proof of stake" to establish distributed consensus will solve the energy problem related to cryptocurrency. Ethereum is one example of such cryptocurrency that uses this mechanism.

Ethereum doesn’t use PoS. They’ve been promising it since 2014, but the network is still on PoW.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#19
post #12

"Proof of stake" to establish distributed consensus will solve the energy problem related to cryptocurrency. Ethereum is one example of such cryptocurrency that uses this mechanism.

Ethereum does not use Proof of Stake, it is a proposed change that is being worked on, with a timeline of several years before it will be put into action, and that's only if the network accepts it.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#20
post #12

"Proof of stake" to establish distributed consensus will solve the energy problem related to cryptocurrency. Ethereum is one example of such cryptocurrency that uses this mechanism.

Eth is still spending plenty of energy on PoW, but most L2 systems are PoS and the PoS L1 system is running, but just deferring to the PoW chain right now
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